Gloria Scott
by Juliana Brandagamba
Summary: Very loosely based on the Conan Doyle adventure, The Gloria Scott. Will hopefully become a proper mystery. Sherlock has made an acquaintance at university, Victor Trevor, and visits his house in the holidays, where he will put his deduction skills to good use for perhaps the first time in his life.
1. Victor Trevor

**Note: I have no idea where Sherlock went to university, or what he studied, but for the sake of the story I have imagined that he studied Chemistry at Oxford.**

* * *

Victor Trevor and Sherlock Holmes were not friends. As Sherlock was always keen to maintain, they were acquaintances – the word sounded fancy to everyone but him, because he used it all the time. Sherlock Holmes didn't have friends.

Sherlock's worst nightmare about going to university had been having to live with people. He didn't do living with people – or just people in general. He hoped that he would be able to hide in his room permanently, study if he needed to, read up on his interests if not, and generally be independent to the point of forgetting that others existed. For a few weeks, it was fine. Then the dog incident happened.

Few might have guessed that Sherlock was in fact a little afraid of dogs, but, in his words, he had his reasons. They were a bit like people in some respects – always trying to be friendly, but in a way that didn't suit him at all. He supposed that biting his ankle and forcing him to limp around on crutches for a week was probably friendly according to the dog. 'Don't worry, he's fine,' Victor had said as the dog made a beeline for Sherlock, like most dogs seemed to, and mauled at the flesh above his socks.

Victor was a perfectly ordinary individual who was in Sherlock's college and studied history. The two young men had not, however, met before then – indeed most people hadn't met Sherlock, and his existence was more of a fable than anything else among all but the chemistry students. But Victor was also a little independent, and had his own network of people he knew but whom he wouldn't quite call friends. Finding himself with slightly less money than he had hoped halfway through the first term, he took up dog-walking, and it was his first charge that spontaneously decided to attack Sherlock whilst the two were going opposite ways through the park.

'Oh, I say! Sorry!' cried Victor. 'Here –' And he offered a hand to Sherlock, who had crumpled and was clutching at his ankle. Sherlock took it carefully, as he was always diligent around those who claimed that their dogs were nice when in reality they were frankly evil.

With Sherlock leaning on his shoulder and so much of the lead wrapped around his hand that he was not so much walking the dog as dragging it, Victor called for help from those around; and eventually Sherlock got to the hospital, and his leg was bandaged and he was given a crutch to lean on whilst it healed. Though he was fond of taking brisk walks in the park when the weather was fine to mull over his thoughts, he was not entirely displeased, as he would have an excuse to stay in his bedroom for as long as he wanted.

His hopes were however shattered when Victor Trevor insisted on visiting the "invalid", as he called him. The poor boy had dropped his disastrous dog-walking job, and could not have been more apologetic about the incident, but he didn't quite understand that Sherlock had accepted his apology a long time ago and would prefer it if he stayed out of what many called his "introvert bubble".

There he was, lying on his bed with his hands clasped below his chin, his eyes closed, solving unsolved crimes that he had read about earlier in the library and generally having a splendid time, when there was a knock on the door.

Nobody had ever knocked on Sherlock's door before, but, as a whirlwind of thoughts swept through his mind, he guessed who it was and groaned inwardly, opening his eyes. 'Come in, Victor.'

'You knew it was me!' Victor came in with a look of surprise on his face, but he was smiling. He had heard of Sherlock's proficiency at guessing things – well, he called it deduction, but there were a lot of people who called it educated guesswork – but he had never seen it demonstrated before now.

'But of course. I don't get visitors. Except when I'm ill. And you would naturally be my first visitor, seeing as –'

' – it was my fault, I know, I know.' Victor sighed. 'Look, Sherlock, I'm really sorry.'

'I know you are. You don't have to keep apologising.' Sherlock rolled his eyes in a gesture that wasn't entirely friendly. 'Is that tea you've got?'

'Mm.' Victor set down the tray he was holding on Sherlock's bedside table (a rather overcrowded table, piled high with papers and books that, thankfully, formed a flat surface on which to place things) and offered Sherlock one of the cups of tea that was upon it. Then, without asking, he took Sherlock's second-favourite thinking-space – the chair with the embroidered cushion on it. Sherlock gave him a look, but he didn't notice.

'How are you finding your course? It's Chemistry, isn't it, that you're doing?'

'Yes.' Sherlock sipped at his tea and hoped that he wouldn't have to make too much small talk. None at all would have been preferable, but that was now impossible.

'Not really my area, I'm afraid,' laughed Victor.

'Nor mine,' admitted Sherlock suddenly.

Victor stared at him in slight astonishment. 'Why are you doing it then?'

'There wasn't a course called Deduction in the prospectus,' said Sherlock. A very quick smile crossed his face. 'And Chemistry could come in useful...'

He didn't sound entirely sure, and Victor felt he understood. 'So you just wanted to get away from your family for a bit?'

'Yes. Though really, the worst of them had already left home.'

Sherlock was making almost normal conversation but his eyes were still watching the tiny movements that Victor made, which was disturbing the latter rather.

'Who was that then?'

'My brother. Mycroft. He works in the government now.' Sherlock paused. 'A few more years, and he _will_ be the government, damn him.'

Victor looked impressed despite himself. 'So he's aiming to be Prime Minister?'

'Not exactly,' Sherlock replied with an enigmatic smile that contained not a hint of humour.

Victor decided to change the subject. 'I don't suppose you couldn't do one of those deduction things about me?'

Sherlock rolled his eyes again. 'I already have done. You're from the north, probably Yorkshire, judging by the accent that you try to hide. You adopted a "posher" accent to try to disguise the fact that you used to go to a state school, and so that you would fit in at Oxford, but you still feel as if you stand out, and that's why you've been afraid to try to make friends. You –'

'Very good, very good,' Victor interrupted. Sherlock had struck a rather sensitive chord and he was regretting asking for a deduction. 'You're public school, aren't you?'

'Because of my slight disdain for state schools?' Sherlock smiled. 'I make a point of not judging people, don't worry. Not until I have solid data, at the least.'

Victor nodded, relieved. 'Anyway, I have an essay to do. I'll let you get on with – whatever it was you were doing.' It had not escaped his notice that Sherlock had been doing nothing when he had entered, and was even now stretched out still on his bed, not looking as if he would make a move any time soon.

Halfway through this conversation Sherlock might have been immensely heartened by Victor's last statement. Now, though he did want Victor to leave, he admired the boy's ability to guess that this was the case. So few people recognised Sherlock's need for short conversation and long periods of "alone time". Perhaps he could like Victor. He always said that he didn't need people, but if it had to be so that Victor became his acquaintance he wouldn't be completely annoyed.

'I hope your leg heals soon,' said Victor, with a look of the greatest guilt and regret, and he went from the room with a rather cheery wave that Sherlock, quite unexpectedly, returned.

* * *

Victor made a point of coming to visit Sherlock regularly. Sherlock managed to limp to lectures and practicals, setting off rather earlier than his peers (though that didn't matter as he was an early riser anyway), but otherwise he stayed in his room, burying himself in his pillows and reading or just thinking. He liked being alone more than anything, but he found he came to appreciate Victor's visits, for he knew that they were out of true kindness and concern, and that Victor, being more of an extravert, needed conversation and had few other people with whom to talk. He and Sherlock didn't have all that much in common, but they did share a love of reading, and also fencing and boxing, which Sherlock promised to take up when he could walk again – which he duly did so, and though Sherlock was by far the better in these sports, Victor proved a formidable partner for him, learning quickly and showing himself to be nimble and quick-thinking. They got to know each other better through this medium, and soon Sherlock numbered him among his good acquaintances – he had very few of these, and most of them seemed to have drifted away over the course of his life, and though he would never admit it, he was secretly very pleased that he had an almost-friend nearby, for when he wanted company.

The holidays were upon them before they knew it. Sherlock had planned to stay in Oxford, as he preferred it to home; but Victor was going back home, and, seeing that Sherlock would be almost the only one left behind, took pity on him and invited him to come with him and meet his father and sister. 'You can stay as long as you like,' he said; 'Dad won't mind.'

And so, on a day on which the first snow of winter was making a tentative appearance from the banking clouds, Sherlock found himself going to stay at another's house for the first time in his life, walking down to the station and holding a more animated conversation than he thought he was capable of, and happier than he had been in a long while.


	2. Deductions over Tea

'You must be Sherlock Holmes.'

Mr Trevor held out his hand, and Sherlock shook it politely, his eyes unusually bright as he looked his host up and down.

'Andrew Trevor. Or Old Trevor to my friends.' He smiled, though a tad hesitantly. 'Come in, come in.'

They pulled their suitcases up the steps and went into the little kitchen, a rustic and ruggedly beautiful affair that was disorientating in its old-fashioned feel. Standing in the doorway at the other side of the room was a young woman whom Sherlock assumed to be Victor's sister, a young woman of uncommon beauty; she bore little resemblance to either Victor or Old Trevor, but Victor had mentioned that she was greatly similar to their late mother.

'Ah, you're Vic's friend,' she said with a beguiling smile and a surprisingly strong Yorkshire accent – a brogue almost as strong as that of Old Trevor himself. This voice coming from that face was, somewhat bizarrely, disconcerting, and Sherlock hesitated for a fraction of a second before shaking her hand; she laughed, it seemed, at his over-politeness. Was he being over-polite? He wasn't sure – he wasn't too good at interaction with strangers. Or anyone really.

He shook off the thought and continued upstairs after Victor to the guest bedroom. This was a small plain room done up, Sherlock could see, quite recently, probably due to his imminent arrival. Something had been taken down from the wall – a poster? There were sticky tack marks on the wallpaper – and been replaced with a print of a work by some obscure artist – probably local: it was a landscape criss-crossed with dry-stone walls, with grey hills rising towards an overcast sky; and though it had been sketched beneath a skilled hand, the literal nature of it showed that the artist was probably an amateur. There Sherlock had to stop deducing things, because Victor had just cut into his daydream with some comment about the bed.

'Sorry about the duvet,' he was saying: the cover was one of those floral ones that pretends to be non-gender-specific but fails dismally.

'It'll be dark when I use it: it doesn't matter.'

He tried to stop his eyes from taking in the room rather than looking at his friend: luckily Victor understood what he was doing.

'What have you deduced from here? – That we're not all that well off and Dad had to do up the room last week?'

Sherlock had to nod, though he didn't like to. Victor had always felt some distance between him and this boy who came from a richer-than-they-looked family away south somewhere, and Sherlock knew this but was afraid to say it. 'Has it always been the guest bedroom? – No, I imagine it was a study or something...' He paused. 'That's curious. It's always been a bedroom...' He blinked. 'Sorry. What were you saying?'

Just as Victor was about to reply there came a shout from downstairs. 'Victor, I've put the kettle on. There'll be tea in the living-room in a few minutes.' It was Old Trevor.

'Oh, good,' said Victor. 'Come on, I'll show you my room – the room across from yours is the bathroom, by the way – and this is Dad's, and Caroline's –' Caroline was Victor's sister ' – here's mine.'

He was showing Sherlock some of his books – he was a little obsessed with murder mysteries, a passion that Sherlock partly shared – when Old Trevor announced that the tea was ready. So the boys trooped downstairs, and settled down on the settees; Old Trevor had set down a tray on the coffee-table, and handed out the cups of tea to the three youngsters before taking one for himself.

'Yorkshire Tea, I expect?' said Sherlock with a wry smile, receiving his cup.

'Let me guess – because it wouldn't be anything else up here?' laughed Victor as he sipped from his own tea.

'About the easiest deduction I've ever done,' said Sherlock. He stirred a couple of spoonfuls of sugar into the tea, which he took black, and then caught sight of Old Trevor watching him.

'Victor says you're pretty good at these deduction things,' Victor's father said at length.

Sherlock shrugged. 'It's a hobby of mine.' He didn't care to add that it was just about his only hobby, and he was still wondering how he could make it useful, because a career as a chemist didn't appeal to him despite his interest in the subject.

'What can you deduce about me?' asked Caroline, whose eyes sparkled with curiosity.

He looked briefly at her. 'Single. Secretary, but looking for a new job. You went swimming this morning –'

Caroline cut this chain of random comments off by uttering a tiny cry and putting her hand to her hair. 'I didn't realise – Oh, God, is my hair all mussed up...?'

'Your hair's fine,' Sherlock said hurriedly. 'No, I deduced the swimming from the smell of chlorine. Anyway, you went swimming, and then you went for a walk by the river, I expect, before going to the shops.'

'I won't even ask,' laughed Caroline. Then she frowned. 'Single?... I mean, you're right, but...'

Sherlock just shrugged. He had rather egotistically assumed this point from a quick study of the clothes in her wardrobe and the conclusion that she had dressed up rather for his visit, combined with the delighted letter that she had sent Victor when he had said that he was bringing a friend to stay. Perhaps she didn't see boys very much. Trying to change the subject he added, 'Oh, and do you play the violin?'

She nodded in mild surprise.

'Fingers,' Sherlock said vaguely. Caroline put her tea down to study her fingers, which bore the tell-tale lines left by the strings. 'Anyway, I know a violinist when I see one,' he added somewhat enigmatically.

'What about me?' asked Old Trevor, keen to see some of Sherlock's famous deduction magic worked on him.

Sherlock shot a sideways glance at him. 'You've spent the past couple of months afraid of an attack by someone whose appearance you're perhaps unsure of.'

Old Trevor narrowed his eyes but laughed at last, rather falsely. 'Well, you're right on that point. There've been a couple of armed robberies, you know, round here lately. Nobody's been hurt – yet – but they haven't caught whoever it is behind them. How do you know, though?'

'You were already at the door when we came to it,' replied Sherlock, 'but you didn't open it until we were close, like you'd heard the gate open – we opened it rather quietly – and you were seeing who it was through the spy-hole. When we came in you were just stashing away a stick that you'd been holding – a stick that would be a formidable, though not deadly, weapon. You were still cautious about me, like you're wary of strangers. And anyway, Victor did mention something about a robbery,' he added, almost as an afterthought. 'Someone down the road, wasn't it?'

'Mrs Beech.' Old Trevor nodded. 'Poor woman. She's eighty next week, you know. Can hardly walk. Anything else, though?'

'About you?' Sherlock considered. 'You play the piano. I can tell that by your handspan. Very wide, and different on each hand. Anyway, it's your name that's on the book on the music-stand.' He smiled quickly. 'You're a gardener. Growing vegetables, I expect.'

He nodded, looking mildly impressed and studying his hands, surprised to find that they were perfectly clean, and there was no soil under his fingernails to give away his hobby. 'How did you work that out?'

'Oh, you have left a pair of old trousers with soil on the knees on the chair in the bathroom. You don't have a garden, so you must have picked up the soil in an allotment or something. There are allotments up the road – I saw them walking here: it's the same soil. I happen to have a good memory for different types of soil,' he explained to his baffled audience, reddening a little. 'And if you have an allotment, it's most likely for growing vegetables.'

Old Trevor blinked at this rapid and somewhat random speech. 'Extraordinary. Victor says you should be a detective, the things you can work out.'

'A detective...' Sherlock paused, his eyes closing briefly as he thought on an idea that he had had before but never really entertained. 'Perhaps.'

'Is that all you have worked out about me?' asked Old Trevor, who was evidently eager for more of these genius deductions.

'Well, I believe that you have been intimately associated with someone with the initials GS; and you...'

He did not get any further. Old Trevor had tried to spring to his feet, thought better of it, and sat back instead, his face going remarkably pale. He took a large gulp of tea that nearly drained his cup. 'Good Lord... how d'you know that?'

'You have a mark on your forearm that shows you've tried to remove some sort of tattoo. There's a photo upstairs from when you had that tattoo that shows, very faintly, the initials GS on your arm. I expect only somebody looking for it, and looking very closely, could distinguish it,' he added, staring in a rather concerned manner at Victor's father, who still looked somewhat shocked. He guessed that he had probably struck the wrong chord. Damn it – he was always doing that. He had with Victor as well. 'I do apologise, sir. I didn't mean to upset you.'

'Oh, no, don't worry about it.' Old Trevor's cheeks had regained some of their previous colour and he sat up again, absently pouring himself some more tea and stirring a few spoonfuls of sugar into it. 'Old lovers... Their memory is always the most painful.'

Victor and Caroline were both curious, that was evident, but neither pursued the matter, knowing that their father would keep it to himself or reveal it in time. He had never spoken too much about his life before he had been married to their late mother. Sherlock also did not say anything more about the business; but he suddenly found himself lost in thought trying to recall where he had seen the initials GS before.


End file.
